Hyenas

by Michael Sellars

  The Alexandra Tower appeared, the snow seeming to part, the big reveal at the end of a magic trick. He veered toward the river, toward the railing, beyond which the boat and Ellen and everybody else would be waiting.

  And then he saw Simon, lying in the snow, face-up, bloodied open mouth catching snowflakes, eyes rolled back to reveal whites like ice. His pale dreadlocks were splayed out across the snow in a neat, symmetrical pattern that looked almost deliberate, arranged.

  What happened next seemed to take place in entirely the wrong order.

  Jay fell, sprawling in the snow, and for a fraction of a second he thought he'd tripped on something, the outstretched arm of one of Liverpool's dead, perhaps. Then he felt a pain he could only describe as an icy burning halfway up the side of his right thigh, followed by a bone-deep numbness from his hip to the tips of his toes. And then he heard the gunshot.

  He rolled onto his back and looked down at his leg. Tendrils of blood, like the roots of some crimson plant, stretched out from a single, small point on his thigh into the snow.

  The hyenas — at least fifteen of them — stopped and turned toward the source of the gunfire, a militiaman, little more than a silhouette in the swirling snow.

  “Told you'd I'd take you down, you little cunt, didn't I? Fucking told you!”

  Pete.

  The hyenas bore down on him and Pete fired enthusiastically into the pack.

  Jay tried to get to his feet, but his lifeless leg was impossibly heavy and the most he could manage was to sit up. He looked to his right. The guard rail wasn't as close as he'd hoped but he had no other options; he flopped onto his belly and, clawing through the soft top layer of snow and driving his fingertips into the frozen crust beneath, dragged himself toward the river, pushing with his uninjured leg, dragging its useless associate behind.

  There was a gunshot accompanied by a high-pitched ping; an unspectacular spark appeared briefly on the top rung of the guard rail. Jay kept moving. The numbness in his leg was beginning to lift. He wished it hadn't.

  There were more gunshots, followed immediately by the sound — somehow hard and wet — of bullets thud-ripping into hyena flesh.

  “Fucking jokers!” Pete all-but shrieked. “Get out of the fucking way!”

  Three, four, five more gunshots. Then one, two, three clicks.

  “Bollocks!”

  The hyenas erupted into snarling laughter.

  Pete whimpered. Then he started to scream. Started but didn't finish, the emerging sound muffled as the hyenas fell upon him. Jay might have felt sorry for him, if it wasn’t for the sight of Simon, like a trophy on display.

  Jay grabbed the lowest rung of the guard rail, the first of four, with his right hand and dragged himself closer. He threw his left hand up onto the second rail and pulled himself closer still.

  There was a series of thuds as the hyenas slammed their fists into Pete, the sound becoming progressively more liquid, a kind of slow motion version of the thud-tearing of the bullets.

  Jay grabbed the third rail and pulled himself up onto one knee. He didn't dare bend his wounded leg; he just let it jut out. Even so, as he seized the top rail and pulled himself up onto his feet, the pain was extraordinary, as if some gruesome Tom Horner had rammed a thumb deep into the muscle of his thigh and was wriggling it around in search of a plum.

  The liquid thudding behind him, like children stomping in muddy puddles, was now accompanied by the snapping of bones. Jay was certain that, any second now, the hyenas would break open Pete’s skull, if they hadn't already, find disappointment and turn their attention to him.

  Crying out in pain, he threw his injured leg over the top rail, straddling it like a child attempting to mount a bicycle that was too big for him. He let the leg drop to the ground but didn't put his weight on it, instead letting his wrists and torso take the strain as he pulled his good leg over and planted his foot on the ground.

  He looked over at the pack. Pete was in ruins now, motionless. Rearing over him, face awash with blood to which fat snowflakes adhered briefly before melting, was Alice Band. She met Jay's eye and grinned.

  Jay looked down into the Mersey and saw the great worn steps onto which Dempsey had fallen before plunging into the waters, temporarily as it had turned out.

  Jay saw the steps, but no boat.

  “And there it was, gone,” he muttered.

  Alice Band roared with laughter.

  Chapter 28

  He couldn't blame them, Ellen, Dave, Kavi and Joe. They didn't need Jay anymore, didn't know him, owed him nothing. The city was crawling with hyenas now. They'd done the right thing, the sensible thing, casting off from dry land, away from all the horror, doubtless with Pete raining gunfire upon them. He couldn't blame them. He really couldn’t.

  “Miserable fucking bastards,” he said.

  Alice Band coughed phlegmy laughter. Closer.

  Jay turned. She was only a few yards away, almost strolling toward him, the ragged remains of her flower-print dress flapping about legs blue with cold where they weren't brown, grey or black with dirt. He could smell her, too: overripe filth and something not unlike the odour that had cloaked his dad toward the end.

  “I can't believe they've fucking ditched me,” he said. “I mean, I don’t blame them, not really, but... Miserable fucking bastards. You can't rely on anyone these days, can you?”

  Alice Band watched the words as they emerged from Jay's mouth. The movement of her eyes and head suggested she was tracking something with an easy, undulating motion. Jay thought: Is that the Liverpudlian accent? Is that what it looks like to the hyenas? Fluid, informal, almost dreamy? Is that how we spoke, this entire city? Were our voices that beautiful?

  “So, what now?” said Jay. “Maybe we could just talk for a while. I could bore you to death, then maybe you'll get fed up and, you know, fuck off. How does that sound? Fair enough?”

  Alice Band, almost within arm’s reach now, continued to follow the lazy trajectories of his words, smiling a little. For a second, Jay thought perhaps she would be content just to hear him talk, but then her legs bent, tensed and she leapt up onto the top rail, balancing with simian ease.

  “Fuck,” said Jay. He stepped back and immediately began to lose his footing, his heels hanging over the edge of the promenade wall.

  Alice Band dropped onto him, wrapping her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist. Her forehead cracked against his.

  Maybe it was down to the wooziness caused by loss of blood, the blow to the head or just plain exhaustion, but as they arced down toward the water it felt less like an assault and more like an embrace.

  For a moment after they hit the water, it seemed as if the oily surface would hold them, that they'd just lie there on that thick undulating skin, like the heavy flakes of snow that refused to melt or sink.

  Then an aperture opened in the river's skin and the Mersey sucked them under.

  The cold was so immediate, so intense, Jay felt his skull would implode, as if it was being crushed between grinding tectonic plates. His eyes were clamped shut, his jaw locked, every muscle rigid. Alice Band’s fingers dug into his back, her forehead pressed hard against the side of his neck. For a moment he could feel himself sinking, could feel the water rushing upward away from him, then all sense of direction abandoned him and he had no idea which way was up.

  The pain inflicted by the freezing Mersey was unbearable. He was certain it would kill him long before his lungs filled with icy water and he drowned. Then Alice Band’s grip suddenly relaxed and she dropped or rose away from him, and he knew he was doomed. If she couldn’t survive, how could he?

  It was over. Finished.

  He felt himself relax then, as if injected with some powerful sedative. The cold was there, the pain was there, but that was all on the surface; deep down he was calmer than he’d ever been. He felt almost happy, the weight of striving lifted from him. He felt warm and buoyant with failure.

  Despite a mouth clenched tight aga
inst the Mersey, he smiled.

  A line from Blake leapt into his forebrain.

  Can I not flow down into the sea and slumber in oblivion?

  It was something his dad had always said when woken from a deep sleep to get up for work or, in his last days, to take his medication.

  Can I not flow down into the sea and slumber in oblivion?

  He could see his dad now, mumbling those words before ducking back under the duvet. And then, an explosion of memories, roaring through his mind just as the icy waters roared around his head, tearing at his face and scalp.

  His dad dripping iodine onto a graze on Jay’s knee and wincing more than his son, as if he was willing the pain away from Jay and onto himself.

  His dad marking schoolbooks, scowling, then looking at Jay and saying, “You’re ten times brighter than most of these indolent little bastards, Jason. Ten times brighter. And better looking.”

  His dad teaching him chess and insisting upon calling the pawns ‘prawns’ no matter how often Jay rolled his eyes.

  His dad laughing uncontrollably, actual tears rolling down his cheeks, as he watched Laurel and Hardy attempt to push a piano up a huge flight of stairs.

  His dad sewing buttons onto one of Jay’s school shirts then getting angry just for a second before belly laughing when he realised he’d sewn through the back of the shirt.

  His dad pitching a tent in torrential rain near Delamere Forest while Jay watched, sheltered under a picnic table. Every now and then, he’d turn to Jay and give him a thumbs-up, as if to say, I’ve got it, I’ve got it, before witnessing the whole thing collapse again.

  His dad walking out of a smoky kitchen, wafting his arms around to disperse the haze, saying, “Christ, I could set fire to soup, me,” then clapping his hands together and asking, “What do you fancy from the chippy, then, son?”

  His dad picking him up and nuzzling his stubbly chin into Jay’s neck and saying, “Happy birthday, little man,” and not letting go for a long time.

  His dad, only a few weeks ago, saying, “It’s nothing, really. Dads, eh? We’re a pretty useless bunch. Mums do all the real work. Dads are only there to save your life if you do something really stupid.”

  Jay started kicking his legs and thrashing his arms, trying to propel himself in whatever direction he happened to be pointed. He still had no idea which way was up, which way was down, but suddenly he just couldn’t allow himself to slip silently away, couldn’t allow his dad to fail.

  The pain, which had retreated when Jay had accepted defeat, returned ten-fold. The freezing water crushed his bones. His lungs were on fire. He’d never known pain like it, never known terror like it, a biological horror, not existential dread, but an almost feral reaction to the prospect of being swiftly snuffed out. He couldn’t help thinking of the horse, snorting great plumes of steam as it ran and ran and ran, preferring to burst its own heart than accept its fate.

  He opened his eyes, desperate to get his bearings, to identify some kind of light, no matter how weak, and begin swimming toward it. But there was no light, just a grainy, textured darkness swirling all around him.

  So, he just kept kicking and thrashing and hoping he was moving in the right direction.

  The burning in his lungs was too much. He exhaled, feeling bubbles hard as stones erupt around his face. If he’d expected relief to follow, he was disappointed. The vacuum that replaced the burning was even worse. The urge to open his mouth and draw in something, anything, was rapidly becoming impossible to resist. A lungful of Mersey River water was better than the agonising void that threatened to shred him from the inside out. He was about to inhale when he realised he’d felt those stone-hard exhaled bubbles run from his mouth, past his nose and into his hairline. He knew which way was up. He was swimming in the right direction.

  He clamped his jaw even tighter, as if he was holding onto a rope by his teeth, dangling over a vast chasm, and kicked and scrabbled at the vicious water with what he knew to be the last of his strength. The pain in his skull was like an icicle rammed into the centre of his brain, an icicle that was expanding by the second. His body was almost entirely numb now and he realised he couldn’t be at all certain that he was kicking and scrabbling anymore, that all this frenetic activity might very well be taking place in his delirious, near-frozen brain.

  But he kept kicking, kept thrashing.

  His lips parted. He couldn’t stop them. They had a will of their own. Metallic-tasting water, so cold it shouldn’t have been liquid at all, seeped between his teeth and onto his tongue. He tried to tense his throat, to seal it against the incursion, but it was no good, the water oozed in. Suddenly he was coughing and with each spasm he drew in another mouthful of Mersey. He thought maybe he was crying now, but he really couldn’t be sure.

  And then his head split through the thick skin of the river’s surface and he could hear and see. The light was feeble but blinding all the same. He retched up foul-tasting water and drew in chill air that was swarming with snow. A second or two of retching and gasping and then the river tried to drag him under again. What felt like coils of current wound round his legs and tugged him downward. Jay kicked against them, tried to pull his legs free. He had some measure of success, disentangling himself a little, but he could feel his energy dissipating and knew it was only a matter of seconds before he went under again; and once down, he knew he’d never get up and out, and he would slumber in oblivion.

  As he struggled, he turned on the spot and looked around for any sign of the promenade. There was nothing, not even buildings, just water as far as he could see; rubbery, oversized waves, flexing. He had no idea where he was. He felt as if he was racing along, out toward the Irish Sea, but it was impossible to be sure with the writhing fabric of snow all around him.

  “Ellen!” He coughed the name as much as shouted it. “Ellen!”

  The current’s tentacles snatched at his legs again, latched on and tugged him down. His head dropped below the waterline. He kicked as if he was kicking at some creature, something he could persuade to let him go if he hurt it badly enough. It worked and he was able to push his face up into the wintery air and draw breath, but only for a second as the trough he found himself in warped upward and submerged him once more.

  He kicked again at the current creature and again succeeded in pushing his face up through the water’s skin. He sucked in a little air and used it to cry, “Ellen!”

  The shark, pale and vast, struck his shoulder with its snout and spun him like a buoy. Jay couldn’t help laughing. A shark? A fucking shark! Christ, he thought, the universe really wants me dead and it’s not taking any fucking chances, is it?

  But then he saw that the shark had Jerusalem tattooed on its side.

  “Ellen!” he tried to shout but the name emerged as little more than a croak.

  But from high above him he heard Ellen say, “All right, stop harping on. Heard you the first time.”

  Hands gripped his shoulders and arms and he was dragged out of the water.

  Chapter 29

  Kavi said, “Lucky, lucky boy. Bullet went right through. He should survive. God is great.”

  “Yeah, but not that fucking great,” he heard Dave reply, “or none of this fucking shite would have happened in the first fucking place, would it?”

  “God is great,” said Kavi, but he sounded a little doubtful this time.

  Time passed and somebody, Jay thought it might have been Joe, said something about “more antibiotics.”

  A little later or a lot later, Ellen placed a cool palm flat against his forehead and said, “Seems to be coming down.” She smiled at him.

  Jay ducked in and out of sleep or consciousness. Every now and then, he heard his dad reciting Blake but he knew that couldn’t be happening.

  “Father! Father! Where are you going? O do not walk so fast. Speak, father, speak to your little boy, or else I shall be lost. The night was dark, no father was there, the child was wet with dew, the mire was deep and the chi
ld did weep, and away the vapour flew.”

  At some point, the boat was hit by a storm. Or maybe it wasn’t and Jay just dreamed the whole thing. In the dream, if that’s what it was, Dave reared above him, face screwed up with fury and said, “This is all your fault, you little cunt! Oh, I’ve got a brilliant idea: let’s escape in a fucking sailing boat even though none of us has ever sailed before. Don’t worry, we’ll be fine, we’ve got a fucking book out of the fucking library! Twat!”

  When Jay woke up, he was back in Waterstones, hiding, the pale wooden underside of the tabletop above him; out of sight, just inches away, the hyena gorged on Byron. Then he realised it was the ceiling of the Jerusalem’s cabin he was seeing and the sound of the hyena’s gorging was entirely imagined, the remnants of a nightmare that had piggybacked into the waking world.

  It was quiet and bright. Gusts of impossibly fresh, chilly air came in through the glaring rectangle of the cabin doorway. Then the doorway filled with shadow, and the shadow morphed into Ellen.

  Smiling, she said, “Get off your lazy arse, Jay. It’s a gorgeous day.”

  He thought of his dad ducking back below the duvet, mumbling, Can I not flow down into the sea and slumber in oblivion?

  He sat up. Every muscle ached and where the bullet had passed through him felt like he had a splinter the size of a broom handle lodged just below the surface of his skin, but he felt good.

  Ellen helped him stand, then, taking his hand, led him out onto the deck of the Jerusalem.

  The sky was cobalt blue and glassy, the sun a blinding white hole. The sea, motionless, did its best impression of the sky.